


Solace

by dame_de_la_chance



Category: Code Lyoko
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Let Them Hug It Out, Non-Graphic Violence, anyway this takes place a week after the season two episode 'Mr. Puck', im literally ready to fist fight XANA at this point, jeremie is a good friend who is trying his best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 09:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14566062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dame_de_la_chance/pseuds/dame_de_la_chance
Summary: Odd has been avoiding Jeremie for some time now, and Jeremie attempts to get to the bottom of his strange behavior.





	Solace

Jeremie knew that his social skills were certainly less than average, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out one of his best friends was avoiding him at seemingly any cost. 

Well, avoiding him as best he could considering they have to save the world together on a daily basis.

Still, it was fairly noticeable.

Jeremie didn’t notice it for a while, only after a few days of being enveloped in silence. Usually, it was a habit of Odd’s to linger around Jeremie’s dorm when Ulrich was at soccer practice, but the blond had yet to make an appearance, at the room was strangely quiet. Jeremie often shoved him out or chastised him for being so loud, but now he began to miss it.

Odd also had the habit of randomly popping by with homework questions, when he felt like doing it. Study sessions, of sorts. And while Jeremie was usually exasperated at his tendency to appear at the worst times, he’d always try to help if he could.

But the past week had been rather Odd free, and it admittedly rattled him.

They still ate together, still hung out or saved the world together, but they never had any time alone. Odd was only near him if Yumi or Aelita or Ulrich were, and once they left, Odd left too. 

It was strange.

The turning point that really made Jeremie feel the need to say something was yesterday. 

Odd had a nasty habit of blaring his music on his speakers so loud that Jeremie could hear it, three rooms down, and still have the beat rattle his bones. The purple clad boy had no sense of rational volume, and Ulrich often had to yell to get him to turn it down. 

However, Ulrich wasn’t there to chastise him, and was instead hanging out with Yumi, so it was up to Jeremie to save his own ears from going dead at the boy’s loud music.

He pattered down the hall and knocked as loud as he could, trying to be heard over the beat. The dorms were ominously empty due to the fact it was still rather early in the day, so Jeremie wasn’t surprised their hadn’t been a noise complaint already reported.

The door swung open, and Odd stood in the doorway, hands on his hips, looking mildly annoyed. His annoyance was wiped away when he saw Jeremie and he stiffened slightly.

“Need something, Jeremie?” He asked, music nearly frowning his hushed voice. He was looking at him, but refused to make eye contact.

“Can you turn the music down? I can’t concentrate on my coding if I’m attending a live concert.” 

Odd nodded absently, and glanced back at his speakers. “Yeah. No problem.”

He shut the door, and the heavy bass beat suddenly softened to where it was no longer shaking the walls. Jeremie frowned, surprised. Usually, Odd had to go kicking and screaming before turning down his ‘artistic interpretation of fine art’. 

He put his knuckles against the cool wood door to knock again, but decided against it. Maybe he was just paranoid.

Still, walking back to his dorm room, he shot Ulrich a quick text, hoping to get some help in this predicament.

 

An hour later, and there was a tentative knock on his door. Jeremie opened it and let Ulrich enter, almost slamming the door shut after them. Ulrich plopped down on Jeremie bed like he was the owner of the room, and raised an eyebrow at Jeremie.

“So, what’s the-“

“Does Odd hate me?” Jeremie blurted, and groaned. To think that a few months back, he couldn’t have cared less if Odd liked him or not, but constantly being on the verge of nearly dying by the hand of a homicidal virus had a tendency to form bonds between people.

Ulrich’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked genuinely surprised at Jeremie’s question. Maybe he had been imagining the difference of behaviour in Odd.

“I was actually going to ask you that,” Ulrich stated. “What’s the deal between you two?”

“You’ve noticed it too?” 

Ulrich nodded. “Hard not too. Usually he’s missing after I come back from soccer practise or hanging with Yumi, but he’s been locked in our room anytime Aelita, Yumi, or I are busy. He’s avoiding you.”

Jeremie sunk into his chair, frowning. “But why? What did I do?”

Ulrich puckered his lips, thinking. “Did you say something that offended him? Insulted the way he dressed? That would rile him up enough to avoid you. He hates it when people make fun of his clothes or his bag.”

“No! I’m not that insensitive.” 

“Hmmm.” 

Jeremie hesitated. “I don’t think he’s avoiding me out of hate.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t get angry around me. He seems to get.... nervous? Anxious?” Jeremie thought back to a few days ago, when Jeremie had accidentally snuck up on Odd. The short boy had startled so badly he nearly fell down the stairs.

Ulrich’s lips puckered tighter and he looked as if he was sucking on a sour candy. “Anxious?” His eyes widened. “Oh.”

“What?”

Ulrich sat up stiff straight, eyeing Jeremie as he considered his words. “You remember last weeks attack, yeah? XANA possessed you, yeah?”

“Sort of.” He didn’t remember a lot from that attack, except passing out on top of Odd and then waking up a little while later. He remembers getting a basic summary from the team, how he destroyed the disks, abducted Aelita, and attacked Odd and Yumi.

“Maybe it has to do with that. Yumi remembers Odd was pretty banged up before she tried to help take you down. And no one except Odd knows what happened after she was knocked out.”

Jeremie considered Ulrich’s carefully worded explanation. It all added up fairly well, but guilt weighed heavily on him as he wondered what he could have committed that was so wrong his friend couldn’t even looked him in the eye.  
He remembers when he had woken up and the situation was explained to him. He had apologised to Odd and the gang, but Odd had brushed him off, saying that, “It’s not your fault. Besides, I won the fight anyway. It was like fighting an electrified twig.”

They laughed, and he didn’t think twice about it. But clearly there was another side to this story.

“Talk to him.”

Ulrich’s words snapped him out of his memories, and Jeremie felt his mouth go dry. “What?”

“Clearly, you guys have a few things to work out, and you can’t fix it unless you talk to each other.”

Jeremie nodded slowly. “Right. Right. Thanks for your help, Ulrich.”

“Never say I didn’t do anything for you,” he said as he walked out of his room, slipping him a small smirk as he closed the door behind him.

Jeremie sighed. The only problem was going to be Odd willingly being alone with him to sort this out.

 

It was towards the end of physics when he made his move. Aelita and Odd were chatting as they gathered their things to leave, and Jeremie quickly caught up them before they could leave the class.

“Hey,” he greeted. Aelita grinned and Odd was trying to subtly not look at him.

“Hi Jeremie.”

“Hey.”

Jeremie glanced over at Odd. “Hey, mind if we meet up after school? I need to talk to you about something.”

Odd frowned. “Sorry. Theo and I have a drama project to work on this afternoon.”

Bullshit. He just heard him gloat about how he finally had no homework at lunch, after his theatre class.

Jeremie applied a fake small smile. “Don’t worry. It won’t take too long. You’ll have plenty of time to meet up with Theo after a five minute conversation.”

Odd hesitated, and seemed to feel Aelita’s questioning gaze. “Fine. See you in the dorms after school.”

The way it was worded almost sounded like a threat, similar to “Meet me in the back parking lot so we can duke it out.” Jeremie gulped, hoping it wasn’t going to come to that because while neither of them were fighters, Odd could easily cream him due to his athletic background of skateboarding and parkour.

“Y-Yeah.

The two ‘cousins’ walked out together, heading toward their next class. Jeremie turned to walk in the other direction toward his history class, planning his next course of action.

 

Three hours and fifteen minutes later, Jeremie was sitting on his bed, waiting for the fellow blond to appear. He was fifteen minutes late, and Jeremie was almost completely sure Odd had skipped.

It wasn’t until he heard the crinkling of a plastic package and the light footsteps that came from a small body did he look up from his computer to see Odd standing in the door way, looking tired.

He entered the room, slowly closing the door with a soft click, and stood next to it as he waited for an explanation. He didn’t sit down and seemed to be guarding the door, as if prepared to escape at any minute.

“Hey,” Jeremie greeted, his throat going dry.

“What’s the problem?” Odd asked, tilting his head, his voice sounding slightly concerned.

“You’re avoiding me.”

Odd shook his head, and forced a fake laugh. “C’mon Jeremie, I am not.”

“Yeah you are- and since when do you ever call me Jeremie?”

“It’s your name?”

“Yeah, But you never use it. It’s always ‘Einstein this’ or “Jer that” but never ‘Jeremie’. What happened to the nicknames?”

“Is this what you called me over for? You actually want me to use the nicknames?”

“No- I-“ Jeremie frowned as he tried to think of a way to explain. This was not how he had hoped things would start off. “You’re acting different around me and I want to know why.”

“Everything’s fine. There’s no problem.”

“Bullshit.”

“Calm down, Jeremie. I’m not acting weird and there’s nothing wrong.”

“Then why don’t you look me in the eye and tell me that?”

Odd had been staring at his neck, pointedly refusing to make eye contact with him. He rolled his eyes so hard they seemed to be doing summersaults.

“There’s nothing going on.”

“Prove it.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“What’s so hard about looking me in the eyes Odd?” Jeremie stood up, crossing his arms.

“Nothing! I just don’t feel that I have to prove to you that I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine then it should be so hard. Why are you protesting such a simple act?”

“Because I just don’t want to do it!”

“But why?! It’s so simple to just look me in the eyes and say, ‘Everything’s fine. I feel fine. We’re still good friends.’”

Jeremie was now standing in front of Odd, having crossed the gap between them as he was speaking, leering above him slightly. He was staring at him, waiting for any sort of reaction.

Odd seemed nervous at the small amount of space between them, slightly bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he was itching to ditch. He probably was.

Jeremie deflated slightly. He didn’t want to scare him. “It’s because of last week, isn’t it? Because XANA possessed me and we fought. Something happened, right?”

He backed off slightly, still standing but now a good meter and a half away. Odd’s anxiously seemed to slowly fade away, and his eyes darted to the carpeted floor.

“Everything’s fine,” he repeated, softer. “So stop worrying.”

“Odd please. I just want to know what happened so we can fix whatever’s wrong because you are avoiding me and I just want that to stop. I like hanging around with you even if you are obnoxious and your jokes are terrible and it’s weird not having you around. So just tell me what the problem is.”

There was a long silence as Odd stood completely stiff, his eyes trained on his shoes, and Jeremie sighed. He was so stubborn, and he was beginning to think this was a lost cause. Maybe Ulrich could talk to him instead and figure out what the problem is.

“You almost killed me.”

It was faint and abrupt, strangely distant and Jeremie’s head snapped up to face Odd. He was now staring at the wall, looking slightly bashful.

“I know it’s stupid and I know it’s petty and that it wasn’t really you that I fought but...” He trailed off, thinking. “Every time I get near you all I can think about is that fight, and how you had stepped on me to pin me down, and the electrocutions, and how you leered at me as you were about to pull off the finishing blow and...”

Odd trailed off, his eyes slowly wandering over to Jeremie, and for the first time in a week, they made eye contact, Odd’s chatoyant orbs boring into Jeremie’s own.

“That was the first time I was really, actually scared for my life. I honestly thought I was going to die.” He ran his hand through his hair, tangling his gel slicked strands. “I know we’ve been in worse situations and I know it wasn’t really you that I was fighting, that it was XANA that had nearly killed me, but it just- I don’t know- it just terrified me that I was going to be killed by one of my best friends...” He was pulling at his hair now. “I know I’m still alive and I know that you’re not possessed anymore but it’s like my brain and my body don’t match and I still get that flight or fight rush and I still expect you to try to kill me and I’m just waiting for you to finish the job from a week ago and I know it’s so, so stupid but I’m-“

He cut himself off as Jeremie inched closer, slowly putting his hand on Odd’s arm to get him to stop pulling on his hair. Odd blinked, his body stiffening for a second before instantly relaxing under his touch.

“It’s okay,” Jeremie offered. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not possessed by XANA. I don’t want to ‘finish the job’. It’s okay.”

Odd stared at him, and he looked so, so tired. Suddenly, the lithe boy pulled Jeremie into a tight hug, his face buried in his shoulder as his body began to shake.

Jeremie didn’t quite know how to react. He wasn’t one for touching or for affection, but he slowly returned the gesture, wrapping his arms around the smaller boy.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Odd whispered. “So I just.... avoided you because I didn’t want you all to worry and I didn’t want it to be really obvious. I’m sorry...”

“It’s okay, Odd. If anything, I should apologise. I didn’t even think about the consequences of having your friend nearly murder you, and how that could leave some emotional residue.”

Odd took a shaky breath, his face still buried in the crook of his neck. “It was so stupid to be so afraid... Yumi and Ulrich and you all nearly die every day and you don’t get so messed up that you avoid your friend for no reason.”

“That’s not fair. They haven’t been nearly killed by their friend. And trust me, we’re all a little fucked up:”

At that, Odd gave a small laugh. “Yeah. I guess we are.”

They remained silent for a little longer, still gripping each other like they were afraid to let go. Jeremie’s mind drifted slightly, thinking about the last year and the different XANA attacks they had all faced.

It wasn’t often that Jeremie truly felt contrite on finding the supercomputer, but on some occasions he couldn’t help but damn that machine. He didn’t regret meeting Aelita, but he regretted all the bagage that came with XANA.

He regretted all the near death they had to face. He never truly questioned their mortality, even with all the brushes with death, and while the close calls sometimes made him question if they were going to win this war without a causality, it never quite... stuck. He certainly never thought of the emotional damage that would be made through their adventures.

But here was Odd, traumatised by almost being murdered by the friend who had put him in this shitty situation, and Jeremie wondered what kind of friend he was for dragging everyone into this.  
If he caused this, he needed to fix it. But he couldn’t undo a year of emotional pain, so he’ll settle for alleviating it instead of getting rid of it. 

“Do you want to talk about that day when we fought? Do you think it’ll help?”

Odd slowly released his vice like grip, his chatoyant eyes staring into Jeremie’s, daring him to back out. Slowly, a sad smile fought its way on his lips, and he nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

 

Two hours later, with an exhausted Odd sleeping on his bed, a blanket gently draped over his limp form, and Jeremie dozing off in his chair, he received a text. He flipped open his phone to see it was from Ulrich, and read the message.

_Is everything working out alright?_

He hesitated, staring at the words and thinking back to the conversations he and Odd had, before typing out a response.

_Yeah, it’s working out just fine._

**Author's Note:**

> Not dead! Wrote this as a warm up before I get cracking on my other work, Kalopsia.  
> I always wanted more interaction between these two and like, friendship interactions, not them being annoyed/hating each other.  
> Plus, I just re-watched Mr. Puck, and when Jeremie was about to deal the final blow, Odd's face was pure terror. I can't even convey how scared that kid looked when he thought Jeremie was about to kill him.  
> And here we are.


End file.
